(Sen. Barbara Favola – General Assembly photo)
BY MELANIE LIPPERT
STAFF WRITER
THE CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE
The Virginia House of Delegates is scheduled to start debate today on a bill to end the legalization of executing mentally ill defendants in capital cases after the legislation passed the state Senate last week.
A related bill was introduced during last year’s General Assembly session by Del. James Leftwich, R-Chesapeake. During that session, the Senate Courts of Justice Committee voted to send the bill to be studied by the Virginia State Crime Commission, but it was never reviewed by the Crime Commission and essentially died there.
This year’s bill, SB 1137, states that an individual with a severe mental illness at the time of the offense is not eligible for the death penalty. It defines “severe mental illness” as the exhibition of active psychotic symptoms that substantially impair a person’s capacity to appreciate the nature, consequences or wrongfulness of the person’s conduct. It passed the Senate 23-17.
Supporters of the bill point to the 2017 execution of William Morva, who was found guilty of killing a hospital security guard and a sheriff’s deputy. Morva had a severe mental illness.
Before his death, a petition was created asking then Gov. Terry McAuliffe to reduce Morva’s death penalty sentence to life in prison without parole because Morva suffered from delusional disorder, a form of psychosis that made him believe delusions and “realities” that were not true. The petition stated that Morva’s crimes were motivated by these delusions, which he could not control.
“Friends and family members helplessly watched Will, a gentle and caring young man, become increasingly irrational and consumed by these delusions,” the petition said. “He had delusions about having special gifts and talents and being called by a supernatural entity to save the world or certain indigenous tribes.”
In 2006, Morva was held in Montgomery County Jail while he awaited a trail on robbery charges. Morva’s delusions were exacerbated by the conditions in the jail, such as overcrowding, and his mental health declined rapidly, according to the petition.
When receiving medical treatment at a local hospital that year, Morva had the chance to escape custody, which is when he fatally shot the hospital’s security guard and then a sheriff’s deputy.
McAuliffe declined to change Morva’s death sentence, stating, “the jury heard substantial evidence about his mental health as they prepared to sentence him [to death],” according to the American Bar Association.
At least 20 percent of defendants on death row in the United States face a similar plight as Morva—a severe mental illness— according to the non-profit Mental Health America organization.
In 2006, the American Bar Association made a recommendation to ban the execution of mentally ill defendants, and a bill to legalize that in Virginia has been introduced in the last three General Assembly sessions.
The bills have died each year.
“I think some people see this as an effort to ban the death penalty in general,” said Rhonda Thissen, executive director of Virginia’s National Alliance on Mental Illness, about why the bills have failed. “This year [the bill] actually passed through the Senate Courts of Justice Committee, so it’s a really important development in this process.”
The Supreme Court identified two rationales for the death penalty— retribution and deterrence—meaning punishment for the crime committed and preventing others from committing similar crimes. But, neither of those arguments apply to a defendant with a severe mental illness because of issues such as disorganized thinking and an inability to control behavior, and executing them does not serve the court of justice, Thissen said.
Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, agreed with Thissen, quoting Duke Law professor Brandon Garrett in the General Assembly last Thursday. Favola is one of the bill’s sponsors.
“‘There are no statutory protections available against the highest punishment for an individual who, by the admission of all experts, did not have the highest culpability. We must be confident that we are not sentencing to death severely mentally ill people who cannot be fully blamed for their actions,’” she quoted.
Sen. Richard “Dick” Black, R-Loudon, however, argued during the session that this bill and change to the execution system will just delay justice. He said Virginia has a fair justice system, and must let the system work.
“We go to extraordinary lengths in these cases to be certain that no innocent person is executed, and this type of [bill] simply delays what should be a proper punishment for people who are greatly deserving of the death penalty,” he said.
Black stated that death penalty cases involve heinous crimes, and the victims’ families are unable to find closure if the perpetrators still remain.
Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham, also argued against this bill during last Thursday’s General Assembly session.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would think that we were empowering juries to execute people who were severely mentally ill and did not understand the nature and consequences of their actions, and that’s not at all the law in Virginia,” he said.
This bill would now take away from the jury the power to determine whether a defendant has a substantial mental illness that would affect culpability, which is a decision Virginia law has reserved for juries and a question they are capable of answering fairly after hearing the evidence, he said.
“If the jury finds that somebody did not have the requisite intent in order to sentence them to a capital sanction then they aren’t going to convict them of the capital offense, and they’re not going to sentence them to death,” Obenshain said.
Thissen noted, however, that many times when juries are evaluating a defendant’s mental illness, it becomes an aggravating factor rather than a mitigating one.
“[Juries] vote for death because they feel like, because of the stigma around mental illness, people with mental illness are inherently dangerous, which is not true,” she said.
Sen. David Marsden, D-Fairfax, said that despite this stigma, society’s understanding of mental health is rapidly evolving, and the criminal justice system is following suit.
“We’re learning more about mental illness every day—to prevent it, to diagnosis, to treat it,” he said. “It is time we stop and recognize our fallibilities as human beings in making this most drastic of decisions.”
Favola clarified that this bill would not clear mentally ill defendants of guilt or punishment, but rather its main objective is to protect them specifically from a death sentence.
“The death penalty is the highest punishment a state can administer, and we need to be judicious on how we administer that,” Favola said.
Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, also voiced his support for protecting the mentally ill from capital punishment.
“Yes, punish them, but not the death penalty because they are operating under a severe disability,” he said. “As we rise as a society, in terms of understanding mental illness, as we become more humane in our society, this is a bill whose time has come.”
urcapitalnews 